Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallieOpening Statement:“Just an interesting game, really. We’ve never had that kind of foul trouble in any game we’ve ever played, ever – to have so many people with two fouls in the first half. It was an interesting twist to the game and I was really, really pleased with the bench overall, just the way that everybody contributed. I don’t know if I consider Richa [Jackson] a bench [player]. She’s a starter on the bench. And so it was great to see her come into the game and make the difference that she made. That was huge, absolutely huge. We had to finagle a little bit, but the team played hard. We had some really good contributions from a lot of people. I think we really grew as a team. Obviously there’s room for lots of improvement in different areas, but I was really proud of Richa and her work and I thought Elizabeth [Williams] battled and battled and kept battling. I think it was a good game overall.”

On the tough time both teams had shooting from the floor:“Just think about what we had to do – we were playing without Lex [Alexis Jones] without Haley [Peters] and without Tricia [Liston]. So when have we done that in a game this year? So we had to cope, we had to cope with that and make changes and take advantage of that. I thought Richa did a great job on that, she took advantage of it, came in and did her work. That’s just what you have to do. You never know how a game is going to break. There’s just no automatics and you can’t compare to other games either. It’s not relative. Every game is different.”

On the combinations she had to go to off the bench:“You’ve got to feel the game. I expect the players to feel the game. As a coach I’ve got to feel the game a little bit, see what’s going on. I knew I was going to put Richa in right away. I knew Oderah [Chidom] would go in as the first post. I knew that much. After that, you just kind of get a feel and see what is needed at the time. If it’s rebounding, I go more towards Ka’lia [Johnson]. If it was ball handling, Chloe [Wells]. And I thought Chloe’s dagger three at the end of the half was unbelievable. I mean, I thought that was worth 10 points because here we were in a difficult situation with foul trouble, Chloe comes down there and hits that shot. That’s the nature of a team. That’s different people stepping up at different times.”

On the contributions of Jackson and the bench:“It’s a long season and it’s important. We need depth and we need confident depth. People say they have depth, well you only have depth if people are very confident and they come out playing like Richa did. So confident depth is really important. We need to continue to develop that, bring Oderah along and Kendall [McCravey-Cooper]. Oderah had some big games down in the islands with us. So it’s a matter of bringing everybody along.”

On the team’s activity on defense, especially in the first half:“I was very pleased with our intensity. We had a lot of intensity and energy, and that’s good. Not everything went perfectly, but I thought we were pretty steady … In conference play, where you’re so familiar with everybody, you know them, and you just have to remain really aggressive – attacking but steady across the board. And I thought our team did it.”

On the play of the ACC overall so far:“It’s interesting. You can’t really compare – every game is different for every team. We’re not big score comparers … I don’t believe in that. I don’t think it has anything to do with anything. I think what it has to do with is when you play each other, how you carry yourself. And I think our team is pretty good about that. We look right where we need to look and we’ll learn from this game, we’ll get past it and we’ll go right to Virginia. We’ve been traveling a lot so it’s nice to have another home game before we hit the road again.”

Duke Guard Richa JacksonOn her mindset as a result of the team’s foul trouble:“I just wanted to bring a lot of energy; you know whatever I had to do. Rebounding, defense, whatever it was I just wanted to bring a lot of energy because it’s very rare that a lot of our starters get in foul trouble, so you just have to be ready and take advantage of your opportunity.”

On motivation as a result of being a senior:“Being a senior is big, but I just want to play for my team, with my team, and for Duke as a university.”

On her excitement on offense:“I was just feeding off a lot of energy from my teammates, and just trying to get stops. When Coach P ran a play I just wanted to attack the gaps. We work on attacking the gaps every day in practice, so I saw that they were open so I tried to take advantage of that.”

Duke Forward Elizabeth WilliamsOn the teams ups and downs throughout the game: “I think it was just important for us to get stops, and get consecutive stops, and part of that was rebounding. I just tried to really stay on the boards, and even if I didn’t get the rebounds, just to box out because the weak side board is really important especially when a team is shooting a lot of three-point shots. So making sure everyone was on the same page with that.”

On her strength as a rebounder:“I think rebounding is just about effort, and I think that it is something you can do every day if you go out with a lot of energy.”

Boston College Head Coach Erik JohnsonOpening Statement:“This was a pretty serious weekend for us, starting out Thursday at Notre Dame and then coming to Duke today. It was something that we were really looking forward to, because, as a lot of you know we were on a seven game winning streak. We had played some tough competition early, we had played Stanford in a tough game, and then we lost a couple of tough road games; Iowa on a neutral court at Wisconsin, at one point lost at BYU, and then we had ripped off a bunch of wins in a row. Games like this and weekends like this are when you find out a lot about yourself. So what Duke did really showed us where we are and where we still need to go. Duke has got some of the best players in the country, and they played extremely hard. So even though our players fought and battled, we walk in that locker room feeling like there was another level of intensity. Duke beat us to some balls, their defensive intensity with their hands…there is just no better way to learn those lessons for young players better than doing it and having it done to you. Again, I’m proud of our team, our team fought and battled. What it showed us is, and what I challenged them is, what are we going to see on practice on Tuesday? Are we going to learn from this, and take the attention to details and the intensity to our drills and fundamentals both offensively and defensively? So my hope is that we learn a lot from a game like this, all the credit goes to Duke, they defended extremely well, their players hit great shots, we forced them into difficult shots, and they made them. They deserve all the credit, they earned that game, they’re very, very good and they deserve their ranking, and we just hope that we’ll be good enough to be able to give them a little better run next game, take a little better shot at them.”

On the difficulty of Boston College’s schedule:“Well we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that. You know in the ACC, at some point, you’re going to play a really good team, a really good team, and a really good team. You know, it happened to be two road games against the No. 2 team and the No. 3 team in the country, and they’re not trying to mess with us or anything, that’s life in the ACC and I love it and again, what a great test for us early in the season. We had a nice win over VA Tech to open up the season and they’re very improved. They’re good. But now we see the difference between the level that we’re at, and VA Tech and some of our teams that are building and fighting and getting better, and where we really want to be—being a legitimate Final Four team. And Duke showed us some things like, hey, this is what it takes. So all the credit goes to them and I’m proud of our kids for battling.”

On improving since Boston College’s loss to Notre Dame:“I have to accept responsibility for that one. I think the game plan going into Notre Dame, unfortunately, I put a little bit too much into the way we had been defending and playing some zone and giving some gaps and all that, and we had been doing a great job with shutting down those gaps and Notre Dame’s passers were phenomenal. I was absolutely amazed at the level their entire team, from the high post, from the wing spots, I felt like there was Chelsea Gray all over the courts. And Chelsea did some of those same things today. Duke has maybe some bigger size, some better scorers in some places, Notre Dame had great passers. I don’t think I put our team at a defensive position that allowed us to be successful for too long and then we got in a hole, and when we’re not getting rebounds, it’s harder to get in transition, and that kind of added up, and in front of 8,000 fans, Notre Dame got it going. And they’re very good. I can’t wait for that Duke-Notre Dame game; that’s going to be a lot of fun to watch as well.”

On Boston College’s shooting behind the line:“We’re a great three-point shooting team. We’ve got some of the best three-point shooters in the country, we’re one of the top three-point shooting teams, and we’ve got some of the top three-point shooting individuals in the ACC. But when you force us to just live and die with the three-point shot, obviously the strength of us is that we get to the rim, we get back-door cuts, we get some slips and rolls--we didn’t get enough layups. And Duke did a great job and when you hear Coach P talk about game planning and stuff like that, she talks about that, that hey, teams may hit some shots, but we’re going to keep defending, keep defending, and they did. They really limited us on the interior and forced us to shoot perimeter shots. And, I thought the difference in this game was they recover so fast. They get out on our shooters, so our percentage went down a little bit because now we’re rushing.”